Promising to open the floodgates for media content delivery, RealNetworks is releasing a digital rights management platform that supports both standards-based and Internet media formats, such as RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, and MPEG-4.

The company's Helix DRM platform, announced Thursday, is meant to solve the conundrum faced by content providers and device manufacturers over having to support a hodgepodge of DRM platforms.

"We feel like we've broken through a logjam, offering a single format for a pipeline of content," said Dan Sheeran, RealNetworks' vice president of media systems.

The release of the DRM comes as part of the company's new Helix strategy, announced last year. Helix is both a platform and a community for the standardization and expansion of digital media. Through Helix, Real offers source code for media creation, delivery, and playback, which it calls Helix DNA, so that community members can build media-capable products, intellectual property, and user interfaces."